Claire Junga Kim, MD, PhD

Claire Junga Kim, MD, PhD (Medical Ethics) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Humanities at Dong-A University College of Medicine in South Korea. Her work examines the ethical and policy dimensions of end-of-life care within government-led health systems, with a focus on how public institutions shape decision-making, resource allocation, and patient autonomy.

She is actively engaged in national policymaking as a member of the National Committee for Hospice and Palliative Care and Life-Sustaining Treatment, contributing to the development of sustainable, state-supported palliative care systems and strategies for securing public funding.

Her research addresses the formation of palliative care systems and the broader conceptual, clinical, and policy frameworks surrounding end-of-life care across East Asia, with particular attention to how countries in the region evolve in relation to one another through historically and policy-informed processes of mutual influence. It further examines the financing of end-of-life care within government-driven structures and transnational patterns of caregiving and grieving among geographically separated families.

Building on this work, she focuses on its application to (a) medical and nursing education as well as public-facing educational resources, (b) the generation of evidence to inform health policy, and (c) the evaluation of technologies that support holistic, family-inclusive care.

She is currently a visiting associate professor at Harvard Medical School, where she collaborates with Eric Krakauer on research exploring culturally responsive and system-level approaches to palliative care.